Dixie Divas Read Online Free Page B

shop and lingerie? Let me guess. She sells copies of The Kama Sutra and French panties.”
    “Not quite, but close.”
    “Where is it,” I asked just to be polite; though I had no intention of working in a book store that doubles as a Frederick ’s of Hollywood .
    Budgie gave me directions and I finished my cobbler. I paid my bill and left a tip in the jar by the cash register. Before I got to the door, Bitty barged in with a look on her face like she’d just seen the Loch Ness monster. Her hair dripped rainwater, and mascara smudged her cheeks. As if that wasn’t startling enough, she was nearly speechless. I knew at once that all was not well.
    “Trinket,” she got out between gasps for air, “something terrible has happened!”
    Since I’d already guessed that, I said, “Here, sit down and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
    She grabbed my arm in an iron grip. “No. I can’t. You’ve got to come. I don’t know what to do, and when I saw your car out front it was like an answer to a prayer. Help me. You’ve just got to!”
    I began to get a little alarmed. Even with Bitty’s flair for the dramatic, genuine fear filled her blue eyes and left her skin an uncomplimentary shade of gray. Her smart navy blazer with gold buttons on the cuffs was drenched. She wore navy slacks, sensible low-heeled pumps, and a white silk shirt; a jaunty red triangle of scarf stuck up out of the blazer’s breast pocket. Gold gleamed at her ears and around her throat. She looked like a half-drowned Macy’s mannequin.
    “Over here,” she said, and pulled me back to the table in the corner. She clasped and unclasped her hands a few times. The huge diamond ring on her right hand shot splinters of light across the café. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re not going to believe this. I went out to The Cedars to take the chicken and dumplings like I promised Sherman Sanders and that’s when I found him . . . he’s dead as dirt, and I don’t know what to do!”
    I whispered back, “Sanders is dead?”
    “No, not Sanders. Philip! What am I going to do?”
    “The Philip who’s your ex-husband? The one who just got reelected senator?”
    She nodded. “That’s the one. The police will never believe I didn’t kill him.”
    Good Lord . “Why on earth was he out at The Cedars? And what did Sanders have to say about him being dead?”
    “Sanders wasn’t there. Just Philip. Laid out in the foyer with his head bashed in. That heavy bronze statue I admired the other day is right next to him. It has blood all over the top of it. Trinket—” She took another deep breath. “It’s bound to have my fingerprints on it. I should have thought of that then, but I was in a hurry to get away. It didn’t occur to me about my fingerprints until I was halfway here.”
    This didn’t look at all good. And Bitty may be rattled, but she still knew that.
    “Did you call the police?” I asked her, and she gave me a horrified look.
    “No! They’ll think I did it. You have to know our divorce was pretty nasty, with both of us saying all kinds of stuff, and Philip so mad because I got so much money in the settlement . . . you know what they’ll think, Trinket.”
    I did. I also thought she should call the police anyway. I just couldn’t figure out a way to convince her of that without our conversation ending in more dramatics.
    “Did Philip know Sanders well?” I asked to occupy her while I mulled over ways to tell the police without upsetting Bitty or incriminating her. “It’s quite probable they had an argument of some kind and it ended badly.”
    Bitty plopped down in one of the chairs. Her hands shook, but she had some color back in her face. “Philip has been trying to talk Sanders out of putting his house on the historic register for some ungodly reason. Probably just to spite me.” Her eyes narrowed, and with all the mascara smudges, she reminded me of a wet raccoon. “That bastard ! He probably